Tough Opponent

My mother-in-law told me that since her husband passed away, she has a lot more free time on her hands. The nights are the worst, because she doesn’t like watching TV, so she has to try to find other things to do. But since she lives alone, they have to be solo activities.

So, one night, she decided to play chess…against herself. I asked her if she had won, and she excitedly told that she had, but she said it was a tough match. It was almost as if the other one knew exactly what she was going to do. She would be contemplating moving her knight to this square, when suddenly she realized that the other one would take it with her bishop. The game took over two hours, because she was agonizing about every move and how to outsmart herself!

Squiggly Sidewalk

Near my house is a sidewalk that squiggles back and forth along the road. This might not seem so odd, except it only does it for about 25 feet. The rest of the sidewalk in both directions is perfectly straight. One might ask if it’s bending around something like a tree or sewer access. It is not. There is nothing to bend around. It just squiggles for no reason.

As I walk along it, I imagine the road worker who was cutting the path for it, driving his machine and drinking a beer. The path is straight, and he keeps drinking and drinking and drinking. And slowly the machine starts to swerve back and forth, as he struggles to stay going in a straight line…until he falls off the machine completely. The road crew drags him off to the side to sleep it off, and someone else hops on the machine and finishes the path for the sidewalk. The rest of the crew looks at the now squiggly path right in the middle of their straight sidewalk, shrugs, and fills it with concrete anyway. It beats having to cut it again. Besides the grass is already messed up.